Entries in the 'Evolution' Category

“Evolution—The Next Level” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “Evolution – The Next Level

There used to be dinosaurs; now, there aren’t any. There used to be countless species that no longer exist because this is the nature of evolution. If this is so, will we, too, become extinct at some point in the future?

Evolution moves ever forward. Even though we do not see it, everything in nature follows a very rigid dictate. The final form to which evolution is moving is already set, and determines every form that precedes it. Therefore, when species become extinct, they don’t really vanish; they continue to exist but in a more advanced form. Were it not for the prior form, the current form would not evolve, as well. In that sense, every species that has ever existed exists within the species that inhabit the world today. Moreover, it enables the existence of the current forms of life on Earth.

When something completes its development, it morphs into a new form, and it seems to us as though it vanished, but it hasn’t, it has only progressed. Therefore, we must not forcibly eradicate any form of life, so that all life forms can complete their cycle, but we must also not regret it when a species becomes extinct. The important thing for us, as humans, is to see to our own development.

Today, we’ve come to a stage in our development where we should rise above the physical level and begin to study the purpose of our existence. This stage is the beginning of our spiritual development, when we begin to discover how we are connected to the entire universe, and that our purpose in life is not to secure our physical sustenance, but to reveal the interconnectedness of all of nature and experience it firsthand.

In the spiritual stage, we begin to feel how all of nature operates. We begin to feel nature’s “inner program” and understand “nature’s logic.” As we begin to sympathize with it, we stop feeling our own bodies and begin to feel nature as a whole. And since nature is eternal, this is the point where our physical existence no longer limits our spiritual one, and we transcend time and space as we acquire the qualities of nature itself: connectedness, balance, and harmony.

Once we rise to this level, we realize that this is the purpose of our existence. We find that when we “think” and operate like nature, we become one with everything. At that time, there is no end to our existence. We transcend personal interest and become loving toward all beings, as all beings are parts of us, and we of them. This is the eternal, spiritual reality, and it is the future of each and every one of us, as soon as we transcend our narrow egoism, which caters only to our current, fleeting selves.

“Physical Microevolution Reflects Giant Evolution In The Spirit” (Thrive Global)

Thrive Global published my new article: “Physical Microevolution Reflects Giant Evolution in the Spirit

The main attribute that is evolving in us now is our sociability. We are shifting from “survival of the fittest” to “survival of the friendliest.”

Surprisingly, humanity is still evolving, even physically. Moreover, we are accelerating our evolution. According to researchers from Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, who published their findings in the Journal of Anatomy, “A lot of people thought humans have stopped evolving. But our study shows we are still evolving — faster than at any point in the past 250 years.” As a result of this accelerated evolution, babies are being “born without wisdom teeth and with an extra artery in their arm, while other babies are born with shorter faces, smaller jaws and extra bones in their legs and feet,” they explain. These are not abnormalities; they are natural mutations in healthy babies.

If we get through the next few years without destroying ourselves through war and bloodshed, we will come out the other end of the internal revolution strong, united, and happy.
Michael Laitman

But these changes indicate more than physical evolution. They reflect the profound transformation we are going through in our mindsets. Tomorrow’s children will differ from us in much more than an extra artery or fewer teeth. They will think differently, feel differently, communicate differently, and will therefore build a very different world. They will literally be a different species. We are now in the midst of a historic transformation, which is why humanity is so unsure about its future.

We are moving into an era where we will not feel ourselves as distinct individuals, but as an organism composed of myriad cells and organs spread out across the globe. The advancing globalization and interdependence we have witnessed over the past century will shift from the outside to the inside. We will feel connected not only in consuming commodities, but in our minds and hearts.

Already, the coronavirus pandemic has shown us that we are dependent on each other for our health. Gradually, we will learn that we are dependent on each other for our thoughts and feelings, our aspirations, dreams, and goals in life. We will discover that we cannot leave one part of the planet unattended since that would be as if we have neglected part of ourselves.

It is nothing like anything we’ve ever experienced. It is not communism or even socialism, but a new, social mindset of mutual accountability, a desire to feel close to all the people in the world simply because they really are a part of me.

Currently, we are baffled and afraid for our future. But anyone who fosters connection among people above all the differences should know that he or she is going in the right direction.

If we are afraid of diversity today, tomorrow we will embrace it. We will cherish those micro differences between us in our minds, bodies, cultures, faiths, and habits as they will enrich our lives with color and vitality.

The main attribute that is evolving in us now is our sociability. We are shifting from “survival of the fittest” to “survival of the friendliest.” The transition period may be tumultuous, but we can go through it quickly and pleasantly if we go through it together.

If we get through the next few years without destroying ourselves through war and bloodshed, we will come out the other end of the internal revolution strong, united, and happy. But this will happen only if we act in unison toward this goal. If we do not, then nature will impel us in its myriad horrendous ways to transform ourselves regardless of our wishes.
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— Published on November 25, 2020

The Pain On The Path To Happiness

Dr. Michael LaitmanFrom My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 5/11/20

We are wrong to call COVID-19 a pandemic; it’s a global crisis whose trigger was the pandemic. The crisis was a bomb waiting to explode long before the outbreak, and the coronavirus simply tipped the world off the cliff it’s been hanging on for years. So, we’d be wrong to expect the pre-corona days to return. They won’t, and nor will our lives.

As we come out of lockdowns, we will discover that life has changed, and so have we. Past values will seem absurd and immature. We will not understand why we ever chased the goals we did. Why was it important to wear one brand and not another? Why did we idolize people for their looks, or attributed wisdom to people who could dribble? Did they give us anything valuable?

Quite soon, we will realize what really makes us happy: good friends, and warm families. If you’ve got that, you are the richest person in the world. Soon, we will all feel it.

The beauty about wealth of family and friends is that the more you have of it, the more you enrich others with it, too. Because friendships and families are about people connecting with one another, sharing, caring, helping one another. In this wealth, either everyone is rich, or everyone is poor.

No one can decide for us which way we want to go. The pain on the path to happiness that COVID-19 has opened for us can be small or great; the choice is ours.

[Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash]

“Straightening Up The Economy” (Medium)

Medium published my new article “Straightening Up the Economy

We never knew it, but our economy has been standing upside down for more than a century. Instead of catering to our needs, we had catered to the “needs” of the economy. We worried about growth, production, consumption, and trade deficit or surplus. Somewhere along the way, we had forgotten that the economy was meant to cater to our needs, to see that we had food, clothing, healthcare, housing, and education. If possible, it should also provide us with some pleasant pastime but until COVID-19 came along, we had completely forgotten about it. Now we have been given a chance to straighten up the economy and rearrange our lives in a way that suits our needs.

“Professional trainings will make way for social trainings; we will learn the forgotten arts of making friends, of sharing and caring.”

With today’s technology, there is no need for everyone to work, certainly not the insane amount of hours we had been working until the onset of the lockdown. The average white-collar employee worked far more hours than slaves worked just two centuries ago. It might have made some sense if employees had more freedom or security than slaves, but when the coronavirus crisis shut down the economy, tens of millions of people were left without any security whatsoever — not housing security and not even food security. In other words, yesterday’s slaves are today’s IT professionals, software engineers, freelancers, employees in finance, law, insurance, tourism, and most white-collar professions. In the pursuit of freedom, we had replaced the relative safety of the slave for job titles. But when we needed to fall back on something, we discovered that our titles were completely meaningless. Never mind that they did not make us happy; they did not even give us any security.

The blow that COVID-19 has landed on the economy is humanity’s chance to free itself from the shackles of capitalism. Now is our chance to reevaluate the whole concept of work. Should our job define who we are? Why, for example, should our contribution to society not determine our social status? Why should a lawyer have a higher status than a teacher? Who contributes more to society, the lawyer or the teacher? Instead of appreciating people according to their contribution to society, we appreciate them according to their contribution to themselves. Is it not time we changed our values?

Thanks to technology, very few work hours are needed to provide for the needs of humanity. Within a few years, there will be no jobs the way we think of them today. Simply, there will be no demand for them. Instead of paychecks, governments will provide a basic income or some other sort of secured sustenance to all the residents. This will be necessary in order to prevent complete social collapse.

Then, once people’s livelihood is secured, it will be possible to establish a truly free society, where people work on bolstering their environment rather than their checking accounts.

Secured income frees people to secure their happiness. Therefore, people will focus much more on fostering fulfilling relationships. Professional trainings will make way for social trainings; we will learn the forgotten arts of making friends, of sharing and caring. The end of the reign of the economy is the beginning of the reign of humankind, of human kindness. The coronavirus is not just another virus; it has come to heal humanity, to straighten up our economy and put man on top, rather than money.
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“Above Our Petty Selves” (Medium)

Medium published my new article “Above Our Petty Selves

Detecting new phases in the development of humanity is easy: If a new level of interconnection and interdependence emerges, it’s a sign that we’ve moved into a new phase. COVID-19 is a classic case of emergence of a new phase.

Until now, even in the worst blows that humanity had suffered, such as the two world wars or the Black Death, not all of humanity was involved. The coronavirus brought about the first pandemic that truly merits its name. This is a clear sign that the evolution of reality has entered a new phase. The sooner we accept this and stop expecting life to return to the pre-coronavirus mode, the better it is for all of us.

This supergerm isn’t just another virus. Its impact on the world is forcing us to rise to new levels of connection. Until recently, very few people would as much as think about someone else’s health. Now, all of us are thinking about everyone’s health. Although there is clearly a self-centered motive in this thought, it is nevertheless a level of connection we could not achieve before. Even as the level of contagion in society decreases, we will continue to think about others’ health since we will not want them to become sick and endanger our own health. In this way, the virus has inadvertently connected us and made us considerate of each other.

Once such a level of interconnectedness and interdependence manifests, it does not decline. From now on we will have to calculate all our moves as a society rather than as individuals. Clearly, this is a very difficult shift that our egos shun, but evolution does not cater to our egos. Evolution advances in its path, which has always been toward increasing complexity, increasing interconnectedness and interdependence, and therefore increasing consideration of others. The fact that our egos are uncomfortable with it is irrelevant. This virus or the next, or the one after will impel us to learn to think of others no less than we now think of ourselves. To the extent of our obstinacy, so will be our pain.

Nature’s goal is not to torture us. Its goal is to lead us to greater and much deeper joy than we can even imagine today. It aims to open our eyes to all of reality, to make us omniscient. Yet, nature can do this only if it lifts us above our concentration on ourselves. It has to lift us to heights from which we will be able to see the whole world, not just our own little bodies. To do that, it needs to raise our gaze above our petty selves.

Just as a mother painfully presses her baby out of her womb through a narrow birth-canal, all of humanity is now being pressed out of its old worldview into a new reality, a new world. And just as a baby has no choice but to be born, so will we be born into the new world, as pang by pang our consciousness accepts the reality of our interconnectedness. But once we accept it, we will discover that the world we had lived in before was dark, cramped, and inhibiting.

Through sympathy with others we will learn what true love means, what mutual responsibility is all about, and how each of us is so unique that the whole world will not be complete if we’re not there to give it our share. We will live in a reality of total personal expression and absolute devotion to humanity all at the same time. We will feel satisfied and safe, and we will give that feeling to everyone around us and to all of reality. Life will stop being a nightmare and will start being the dream world that we all feel it should be.

Achieving these rewards depends entirely on our mutual contribution. Only if we all pitch in, the new world will emerge. And until we pull together, we will have to endure the likes of the coronavirus.
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New Life 670 – The Social Mind

NewLife670

New Life 670 – The Social Mind
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe 

A man’s way of thinking is very personal and individualistic so a person acts in his own interest at the expense of others.

This is very clear when we look at babies. A baby doesn’t think about anything but himself, and until the age of three cannot feel the other, and if he grows in a family that is too indulgent, he continues to relate to the world this way even when he grows up.

A person is not born with a built-in inclination for empathy but actually the opposite. He is a total egoist who learns to calculate things, but there are mirror neurons in our body just like animals have.

We are all part of one system and are tightly connected by infinite lines of internal communication: thoughts, desires, and impressions. It is all one general network, like a bag of croutons in a bowl of soup. We have an innate ability to feel the other, but it is egoistic so that we can be careful of what can harm us. It is only through the special method of integral education, based on the wisdom of Kabbalah, that we can learn to use the connection between us in a non-egoistic manner.

The goal of our development is to build the right mutual connections between us until we feel as “one man in one heart” and are in perfect reciprocity, in mutual complementation. And then no one will need to care for himself because everyone will care for him and he will care for them.

When a person becomes free of self-concern, he feels like a baby in his mother’s arms and is free to care for others. On the way to this wholeness, he undergoes a state called the recognition of evil in which he feels that it is impossible to continue the bad relationships between people today.

At the peak of our evolution, in the corrected state, we will be able to feel everyone simultaneously. Our neurons will connect and become one brain. This will happen only if we use the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah that teaches us to properly connect to and love others.

Then we will be like school of fish or a flock of birds moving as one body and will feel the upper force in our common brain that navigates us to increasingly greater connection.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 670 – The Social Mind,” 12/31/15

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Humanity Does Not Become More Sensible Over Time

Dr. MIchael LaitmanIn the News (scitation.aip.or): “Mathematicians from Cornell University developed a model that shows which type of thinking, intuitive or rational, typified humanity in different phases of its evolution.

“According to the study, there were times in human history when people who had a slow and rational thinking style ruled, and there were times when rulers were typified by quick and intuitive thinking. According to this mathematical model, it seems that people are not becoming more rational with time, but that rational thinking actually develops cyclically and can be compared to the four phases of economic activity (recession, depression, upsurge, prosperity). The domination of rationality depends on the amount of resources accessible to humanity.”

My Comment: Everything develops according to the four phases of direct Light, according to the four letters of the Creator’s name, “HaVaYaH,” the general and individual schema of the whole creation, of the whole world and every part in it. The Upper Light has to go through the desire (phase zero), the four phases of its spreading (phase one) in order to prepare it and make it available to feel itself and to want to be like the Light itself (phase 2) ,and then to fulfill its desire (phases 3 and 4). Phases 1-4 develop under the influence of the Upper Light.
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On The Threshold Of Discovering The Goal Of Evolution

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: People are gradually beginning to understand that there is a crisis in our world. They feel it in their lives, and they try to find an answer to the questions: “What is to be done about it? How can one respond to it? How long will it continue?” Is there some kind of rule or lawfulness according to which the crisis will continue to develop further? What can be realistically used as a solution, and what can be offered as a solution to these problems?

Answer: The idea is that we are found within nature, in a particular network of forces, that is developed to the degree of the development of the ego, meaning to the degree of the development of desire on all levels of nature.

In the beginning, these were small desires of elementary particles. After that, the particles became more consolidated until they created a gigantic structure, like our planet Earth, upon which developed conditions for biological life for the vegetative, animate, and human levels. This was the result of the evolution of desire within matter, the desire to receive, enjoy, be fulfilled, and to use material that is found in some kind of contact with us. On this basis a connection between the elementary particles, molecules, atoms and all kinds of biological parts took place, and from the grouping of animals, a beastly society gradually gathered, and from humans, a human society gathered. This means that everything evolved as a result of the evolution of the ego.

Accordingly, our desires also developed: from the beastly desires of the body (food, sex, family), the social desires emerged (wealth, respect, control), because our ego became social. After that, a desire for information developed. Our history reveals that we have gone through these stages on an axis of evolutionary development and we always understood how to act. Our egoistic development instinctively pushed us somewhere: the exploitation of more visible and hidden resources, and the realization of the craving for food, sex, family, wealth, honor, and knowledge.

But after tens of thousands of years of development, suddenly we reached an unexpected situation where the linear and even the exponential laws of egoistic development stopped working. Humanity always developed linearly, and suddenly in the past 100-150 years, this became exponential and has reached some kind of saturation, a summit. We are now at this summit.

On this level, very interesting phenomena are happening since suddenly our ego has stopped working. In the past, the more effort that we invested, the more we developed intellectually and the more we succeeded. The stronger we were, the more confident we felt. But now, not one of these simple linear relationships work. If in previous centuries, a person with a big ego profited more from its use, this is not so anymore, since our normal egoistic development has exhausted itself. It follows that we are moving towards a completely different paradigm, another dependence. The question is towards what kind of a paradigm are we moving? We still don’t know.

Scientists now are beginning to assume and imagine that our continued evolution doesn’t depend on individual ego, rather evolution depends on the mutual connection and coordination between us. Today this is derived from communication, which developed rapidly, is integral and encompasses all of human society, all of civilization, but we are using it linearly, thinking about what one can get from it.

This means that we are found in a transitional stage of the linear ego to a mutual integral connection, and it could even be towards altruism. And gradually we perceive towards what we are going. These perceptions began to be discovered in the middle of the 20th century, from the time of the Club of Rome, who published all kinds of work of economists, philosophers, and other scientists. But the problem is that even though work has been done, and the scientists are more or less aware of this, nobody hears them. And even though we see the futility of the egoistic arousal that continues in both people and in larger organizations, the inertia still exists in all of this and there is nowhere to escape from it.

And in spite of it all, since we continue to work in society, where instead of linear laws, spherical, integral laws are beginning to work, we see how our society is beginning to undergo heavy pressure and find itself in an ugly form. From this is derived the stratification of society, in which its upper part, a few thousand people in the world, concentrate the wealth and control in their hands, whereas the rest of the masses are falling below. An immense gap has been created between the uppermost stratum, composed of a few thousand people, and the lowest stratum, which includes the remaining billions of people.

On the one hand, this certainly must lead to a great explosion. On the other hand, all the wealth that has been accumulated will not be worth anything. The hierarchy of the development of desires (food, sex, family, wealth, honor, knowledge) includes a level in which it is possible to use wealth for the needs of the next level of development. And when humanity begins to overtake this level and complete it, there will no longer be any need for wealth, for the next level begins to appear, it will lead towards the attainment of the meaning of existence.

The scientists who study creation are suddenly beginning to study its holography, multiple universes, and reach the conclusion that planet Earth and our entire universe are finite. We are beginning to understand that we have always been playing some kind of game with money, armies, and wars. And essentially a big process is now taking place in which we are elements within it. Moreover, we don’t determine its development, course or flow, and especially not its goal. We are in a stage where we must discover the true evolutionary goal of our own development. This will bring us to disillusionment and a new vision of the world. We need to look at ourselves and at everything that is happening from the side and investigate all of nature in its coming development.

This means that behind the physical desires (food, sex, family) and the social desires (wealth, honor, knowledge), a new desire is developing for attaining the true meaning of our existence. This is the desire that must dominate us and towards which we are moving. So today, humanity is gradually discovering the crisis, and I hope that we will design the correct vision of it for ourselves, for then we won’t come to deviations on the way, and we will understand that life continues only on this path.
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From KabTV’s “The Last Generation” 8/12/15

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Building Jerusalem Within The Heart

Dr. Michael LaitmanJerusalem is a spiritual concept, which means bestowal to the other. All spiritual definitions indicate different degrees of bestowal, exiting one’s egoism toward others, becoming included in the others and bringing them closer to serve them. Bestowal for the benefit of others is called the spiritual world of the human being.

Jerusalem is a special kind of bestowal. We bestow through our heart, our desires, of which there are 613. Together, they are all building our new desire for bestowal. One of its steps is called “Jerusalem,” a special relationship with others and the height of love.

Question: Why is this human quality called a city?

Answer: The human being consists of four levels, which are four degrees of bestowal: still, vegetative, animate, and human. Bestowal on the first still level is like a city, our world. Then, there are the vegetative, animate, and human levels.

The vegetative, animate, and human levels suggest changes, in contrast to the still level. But a city is a creation of human hands, and thus it also contains the vegetative, animate, and human levels within itself.

Everyone can find Jerusalem inside himself. In the Ari’s book The Tree of Life, it is written that if a person reaches the revelation of the upper force, attitudes towards others, which are love and bestowal on the degree, called the world of Yetzira, inside this state he discovers a special place that is the quality called Jerusalem.

Inside this property, he reveals subproperties: the Temple Mount, the Temple, the Holy of Holies. All of these are the properties of bestowal of a person as he exits himself towards others. Jerusalem is a person’s special attitude towards people, and therefore everyone must build this spiritual Jerusalem within his heart.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 5/7/15

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At The Turning Point Of History

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why does human society develop the way it does throughout history? Couldn’t we have evaded all the great tragedies in our history? And now we are also in a state that no one can understand!

Answer: Everything was very clear… up until our time. From now onward everything is also clear except for the events that we will actually determine in the future, we humans, all of us, by our freewill, which is the reason that it is not predetermined. Up until now we had no choice and everything throughout history occurred according to strict and rigid laws of development on the levels of the still, vegetative, animate, and human.

From Kabbalah we learn that our world was created as a result of the creation of the desire to receive pleasure. This unique created being was shattered into many parts as a result of its evolution, and after the shattering, the parts fell into the level of our world and created its four levels: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking.

These four forms of the desire have to unite from our lower (egoistic) world and ascend to their source, their root, where the one unique desire was created (born).

This is the reason that our entire history is a movement towards unity that is attained by wars, by mutual actions, art, commerce—by all our actions in which we connect and begin to understand one another better by adopting each other’s attributes and thus becoming incorporated in one another.

This unity (which is egoistic at the moment) took place in the last stage of development of our civilization, capitalism, i.e., under the mediation of capital, the development of industry and commerce, which was the basis for the establishment of global economic, political, and social relationships that led us to a global egoistic society. The development of egoism in people led to the development of industrialism, which has led all of mankind to unite egoistically.

Next we have to discover all the evil of egoism and decide whether to flow with the current it leads us along or to correct it by our proper unity.

This is the solution and our free decision. Until now our history was predetermined, but the moment we have to make a decision onward, we don’t know what will happen. To be more accurate, we know what will happen in each of the cases, but it is up to society to determine in which of them we will be!
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